Dr. Harvey Robbins
By harveyrobbins | April 4, 2008
A world class speaker, author, and educator, Dr. Robbins focuses on transformational leadership by providing leadership skill training, team building / team leadership training, management development training, and executive coaching. By providing both leadership skill and management skill training, Dr. Robbins covers both the people and the technical side of effective leadership through his series of leadership, management, and team building workshops.
Dr. Robbins offers keynote, half, full, and multi-day programs filled with thought provoking ideas, humor, participation and interaction, and loads of useful techniques. Currently, Dr. Robbins is working on two new books on leadership; one about how to bring the values of Scouting such as Trustworthiness, Loyalty, etc. into leadership focus (tentatively titled On My Honor…and a second book looking at tools for overcoming some negative tendencies in leaders…tentatively titled The Joy of Cannibalism.
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Leadership Skill: What Motivates People
By harveyrobbins | May 28, 2008
I revised this article a year ago…and now it’s time once again to add some additional insigts to what motivates people. At the end of this article, I will add some additional thoughts that you will find useful as a leader in terms of how to motivate others…
Most people will chime in and say cash. But it isn’t that simple. Cash can be a feeble bond if working conditions are unhealthy or the work itself is unsavory. For skilled workers there must usually be something besides cash on the barrelhead - security, the feeling of being appreciated, being left alone, pleasant working conditions, time off to recoup.
For some people the best reward of all is the work itself - the challenge of an engaging job. For some it is the interaction with other skilled team members. For some it is the intellectual gratification of addressing and solving a knotty problem. Still, for many people, and many occasions, the best reward in a commercial enterprise is good old money.
Management gurus insist that teams should not define their own reward systems - “that’s putting the monkeys in charge of the chicken coop”. But I think it’s an approach worth considering anyway. Team members shouldn’t set their pay levels, I agree - but they may make valuable contributions to defining benefit choices and designing recognition programs.
You may be a distinguished mind reader, and you may have picked the perfect reward last time. Next time, however, why don’t you ask workers what they would like as an incentive or reward? You can’t predict what will light a fire for them.
Consider team-proposed rewards as a kind of compensation laboratory. Yes, there will be some bad ideas, but there will be some that you would not have thought of in a million years by yourself, and the best will carry over to other teams as well.
Who Decides Who’s Rewarded?
The greater likelihood that the person you report to controls rewards, the greater the likelihood they will influence your behavior. In bureaucratic organizations, this logical rule of thumb doesn’t apply - simply come to work and keep breathing and you get everything that’s good. Reward systems cannot be automatic or remote - to be effective they must be managed from close range. Are rewards stipulated by the same entity that measures individual and team performance? They should be.
Should team leaders and team members be part of the individual evaluation process? That’s a tough call. People on the team have the best knowledge of the value of one another’s work. But team members must not be put in the position of politicking one another for promotions and raises. It’s best to have the evaluation occur outside the team, with some evaluation information supplied from within.
Are workers rewarded just for showing up every day? For individual performance? Group performance? Organizational performance? Only a company with a narrow array of functions should be using a single reward approach. It is natural to use incentives to compensate sales people. But if it is good to encourage people in sales, why leave out support functions? The entire bandwidth of a company’s workforce must be looked at to find rewards that push people together toward organizational success.
Rewards must be for achievements that matter, not non contributing, non value-added activities. People must feel their work is important. People who cannot make the crossing to be more accountable even with training must be winnowed out and replaced.
Most organizations spend an inordinate amount of time trying to use their merit budget appropriately. One of W. Edward Deming’s Fourteen Points, however, is that merit raises be abolished. Not only are they destructive to team spirit - each member’s raise coming at the expense of every other member’s raises - but they just don’t work. Splitting 4 percent into x number of shares evenly at the end of the year is not an incentive. By definition, you offer incentives before the fact, not after.
This is such a simple idea - aligning your team’s reward and performance with its business objectives. All it takes is clear thinking, some careful study, and the honesty to see what your organization is really saying to teams.
Some new ideas for leaders to think about when trying to figure out how to motivate others: First of all, you cannot motivate others. I know this sounds crazy because you’ve been told that it’s one of the most important aspects of your role as a leader…to motivate others. But, motivation comes from inside, not outside. At best, you can create an environment that helps people motivate themselves. So, lets look at what motivates human beings…from a psychological point of view.
Motivation comes from the successful completion of defined outcomes. It’s a basic reason for existance. For example, I’m sure most of you have received “honey do” lists or “to-do” lists from your spouses or significant others. And mostly you do the things on the list. Some of you may even dilude yourself to thinking that you are accomplishing the things on the list to make the other person feel better. Or you may do the things on the list because the consequences of not doing them are too dangerous. But, let’s be honest. The reason you are doing the things on the list is that the physical act of crossing something off the list feels really good…inside.
So, as a leader you can create this “feeling” of accomplishment (and motivation) in others by setting up “to-do” lists of items. To-do lists that are prioritized and for each item have a definition of success so you know when you’ve accomplished the task. Once the outcome is achieved, you “catch the person doing something right” and you reward them using the suggestions listed above.
Simple, right?
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“Hidden Secrets of the Best Leaders” - Get your FREE Download!
By harveyrobbins | February 2, 2008
On November 15th, my colleague Rich Elwell and I addressed some of the leadership challenges of business leaders via a one hour Webinar called “Hidden Secrets of the Best Leaders.” Rich is a noted UK NLP Master Practitioner and High Performance Coach. We had a blast. Rich sounded very professional (he is British, after all) and I sounded…well…insane. Read the rest of this entry »
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Leadership Skill: Distrust
By harveyrobbins | November 6, 2007
The very best way to repair a broken bond of trust is to not let it break in the first place. If that is no longer an option, you have a long road ahead of you, winning people back to your confidence. The only way I know is to keep slogging. Tell the truth. Keep your promises. Be reliable. Rebuild your account using regular small deposits. It may take years of faithful, timely payments. Read the rest of this entry »
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Change Management Strategies: Four Attitudes Toward Change
By harveyrobbins | November 4, 2007
There are four attitudes toward change, created by leaders, with which an organization can be managed. They run the gamut from maintaining control (Old Age management) to distributing control (New Age management). Four points can be designated to demark four attitudes about control. Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: Change Management Plan | 2 Comments »
Team Building Activity: Creating a Teaming Environment
By harveyrobbins | October 23, 2007
Organizations seeking the collaborative spirit of teams without the structural upheavals should consider attacking their existing non-collaborative culture hammer and tongs.
The way to create a collaborative atmosphere or “teaming environment” is neither mysterious nor expensive. You begin by sending a simple but unmistakable signal through the organization: you stop rewarding destructive, competitive, one-up behaviors, and you start rewarding group minded behaviors. Read the rest of this entry »
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Leadership Skill: Rebalancing the Stress Load
By harveyrobbins | October 22, 2007
There used to be only two schools of thought about increasing groups’ acceptance of change: Pummel and Pamper. Pummel’s attitude about what workers were feeling was basically: Who cares? Pamper went to the opposite extreme, taking responsibility for everything happening in the individual worker’s head. Read the rest of this entry »
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Leadership Skill: Find a Culture You Like and Copy It
By harveyrobbins | October 19, 2007
I frequently get calls asking about organizational culture. These questions usually arise from either a real or imagined crises resulting from some form of merger or acquisition. Whether between departments merging within a shrinking company or between companies joining forces, the issues are similar. Shouts of “I want everyone to be singing from the same page!” are heard echoing down executive corridors. Read the rest of this entry »
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Leadership Skill: The Accidental Partner
By harveyrobbins | October 18, 2007
The economy has stalled. Smaller companies are either being gobbled up or cobbled down. Larger companies are undergoing the largest merger-fest in U.S. history in order to stay globally competitive. Business strategies have been painfully twisted and squeezed to bolster the bottom lines of too many companies with too few customers. The result of all this chaos is a shifting of resources. Hundreds of thousands of people are finding themselves in new roles with new responsibilities in new or reorganized organizations. Those who have managed to survive the draining of human resources often find little time to grieve for lost coworkers. For now there is as much (or more) work to get done with fewer people. Read the rest of this entry »
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Leadership Skill #3: How to Set Expectations
By harveyrobbins | October 13, 2007
Setting Expectations: Before you, as a leader, can hold people accountable for outcomes, you have to let them know what success looks like and what you expect to see as a result of their efforts. This sound bite gives insights into the reason for the need to set the bar high, when to set them (progress checkpoints), what happens when you don’t set expectations, and how to keep them “real”. Read the rest of this entry »
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Leadership Skill #2: How to Motivate Others
By harveyrobbins | October 13, 2007
Motivation: You don’t have to do cartwheels down the hallway or have pom-poms hanging in your office to motivate people to get the outcomes you want. This sound bite gives you a quick and easy strategy to use to get people motivated “internally”. Hint: remember all those “to do” lists you complain about…but do? Read the rest of this entry »
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Leadership Skill #1: How to Hold People Accountable
By harveyrobbins | October 13, 2007
Accountability: One of the issues I hear about regularly from people in leadership roles is “how do I hold people accountable for outcomes”. This sound bite gives you an explanation for the two reasons people don’t do things and how to hold their feet to the fire to get the outcomes you require. Read the rest of this entry »
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Team Building: The Headache of Policies and Procedures
By harveyrobbins | September 24, 2007
There is nothing wrong with the idea of policies and procedures. But they should be guidelines, helpful ideas to turn to in time of doubt - not a needle’s eye to squeeze the actual corporation through. Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: Team Building At Work | 1 Comment »
Leadership Skill: The Vision Thing
By harveyrobbins | September 23, 2007
I’ve got some good news and some bad. The bad news is that we’re lost. The good news is that we’re making great time.
The point of this old saw is that team talent, efficiency, intelligence, and clout are pretty useless unless the team has some clue where it is going and how it is to contribute to the organization’s overall strategy for success. Read the rest of this entry »
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Management Skills: Management and Leadership
By harveyrobbins | September 20, 2007
There is a difference between management and leadership. Management is a science, whereas leadership is closer to an art. Management is about the how of doing things, whereas leadership is subtler and has to do with the why.
The last thing I want to do is disparage management science. The truth is, one cannot be even a passable leader without management competence. Read the rest of this entry »
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